Five Secret IPC Contracts

A review has recently taken place of the rights categories currently on ECS. It appears that a large amount of title specific rights categories have appeared over the years which either duplicate other rights categories or are no longer used. A proposal has been put forward to consolidate the current 18 rights categories into 5 IPC specific rights categories which are outlined below with the legal definitions provided in the attached document:

One Use

One use Only

Contributor retains copyright

No embargo period

Not available for use in brand extensions, International editions, or for syndication

This rights category would mainly apply to agency stock photographs or model bookings

First Use

First use in the IPC title in the UK

Contributor retains copyright

Embargo period (negotiable) after the date of publication

Not available for use in brand extensions, International editions, or for syndication

This rights category would be used with contributors who are essential to use but who refuse to grant any rights to the title or if the commissioned content has no re-use value

First Use with Extensions

First use in the IPC title in the UK

Contributor retains copyright

Embargo period of (negotiable) months after the date of publication

Available for use in International/licensed editions and free re-use within title and its specials, but not for brand extensions or for syndication

This rights category would mainly be used for contributors who are unwilling for IPC to syndicate their material but where the title has international editions or wish to have extended use of the material

Qualified Rights

First use in the IPC title in the UK

Contributor retains copyright

Free re-use in title and brand extensions

Free use in International editions

Exclusive world-wide syndication for period of copyright with a (negotiable) % royalty to contributor

This rights category would be used for contributors who are unwilling to assign copyright to IPC or if acquiring ‘all rights’ would be too costly

All Rights

IPC Media acquires copyright

This is the preferred rights category where the commissioned content has re-use value.
This category will also apply to model bookings

The category of Case History will also be retained as a payment system for these type of commissions.

There have been slight changes to all commissioning letters and core contributor agreements to come in line with AOL Time Warner requirements. Due to these changes all core contributors will need to sign a new core contributor agreement letter. A document detailing your core contributors has been attached to this email. After consultation with the Editor’s Group it was suggested that some titles may wish the communication with the contributors to come from myself. If this is the case please let me know. Please could you communicate this proposal to your commissioning editors and ECS users and forward to me any objections/problems that you or your teams can foresee with this proposal which we can discuss further. I am happy to attend these meetings with you, if further clarification is needed.

EPUK is an email group for professional editorial photographers who want to talk business. We don’t do techie stuff or in-crowd gossip. We don’t talk cameras or computers. What we talk about are the nuts and bolts of being in business - like copyright, licensing, fees and insurance.